Lindsey Vonn won Saturday. Improbably, maybe, but only if you don’t know Lindsey Vonn, who is as mentally tough as they come.

That she won is good — obviously — for her. Better, it’s good for the U.S. team, for alpine skiing and for Olympic sports, because the Olympic world needs stars and Lindsey Vonn is a big star, arguably the biggest in all of winter sports, even though she didn’t even ski at the Sochi Olympics.

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — After Austrian racers had on Saturday dominated yet another edition of the women’s Olympic super-G, the Canadian skier Canadian Marie-Michele Gagnon was asked the obvious: how can this be? And she laughed.

The fourth gold medal — out of eight — in Olympic super-G history? The third Olympic super-G gold in a row?

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Alan Abrahamson is an award-winning sportswriter, best-selling author and in-demand television analyst. In 2010, he launched his own website, 3 Wire Sports, described in James Patterson and Mark Sullivan's 2012 best-selling novel Private Games as "the world's best source of information about the [Olympic] Games and the culture that surrounds them."